Divided Dining
Steven must face his self-sacrificing father, diplomatic mother and benevolent grandfather with his failure in getting into medical school. When his father confronts Steven after finding his rejection letter, this everyday dinner quickly becomes filled with tears, anger and resentment.
Divided Dining (2024) was my first experience leading a crew as a Director of Photography. The production took place in a studio, where the crew built the set and shot the short film in four days. I had the opportunity to be a story editor for this script before the crew had formed. Being able to work on the project from such an early phase in development resulted in a clear passion and vision for the film.
The script made me realize the power within stillness and silence. It is not the always the loudest moments and reactions that scare us, rather, what is most frightening is silence.
I chose to make the camera another character in this film, making the camera exist within the tense stillness of this environment. This was done by have a lot of camera movement in the film, specifically camera movement that mimicked how one looks and moves around a room. The camera acted as another person in the room with the pans and movement of the camera.
This movement was quite difficult to achieve with our given budget. Often, a Crane is able to achieve camera movement that is smooth enough to mimic a person's gaze as they move around the room. However, we did not have enough room in the budget to afford a Crane. What was available to us was a Dolly and Steadicam.
In order to achieve the look I had envisioned I placed the Cam Op on the Dolly with a Steadicam. We were able to use the Dolly without tracks to mimic a person walk around a room while the Cam Op was able to move the camera in a similar motion to a person's head movements as they look around
